Saturday, June 5, 2010

A month ago we advertised for an 'Extraordinary Customer Service and Startup Wonderperson' on this blog. We had thought that maybe we'd get a few applicants, perhaps we'd need to advertise on a jobs website and we set ourselves up for a fairly lengthy process before we would find the right person for the role.

Wow, were we overwhelmed with the response! We had more than 20 applications, most of which were incredibly impressive people who we could have hired immediately. We couldn't believe it. The most impressive application I had ever seen for any role anywhere came from Susie who included a full to do list for a day of hers at Shoes of Prey. The list showed she had clearly read through this entire blog and has an unbelievable understanding of the role.

So with applications of this calibre we put a lot of our other work on hold and got interviewing. Mike was in Japan so Jodie and I interviewed 17 people over 2 weeks.

Our mindset of being able to hire nearly all of the applicants didn't change at all, in fact interviewing people only made the decision even harder. We had so many people who exceeded the criteria we'd set out for who we wanted to hire and it was an incredibly hard decision.

In the end though, we couldn't go past Carmen Roche. Carmen has a bachelor of Arts and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University. As a graduate she spent 7 years working in the marketing team at Accenture, followed by 2 years at the US Treasury Department as an International Economist. She was 2/3 of the way through a PhD in law focusing on Trade and Development when she had her first child. She's been out of the workforce for a couple of years taking care of her two young boys and was looking for a role out of the traditional corporate space that could offer her the flexibility to work from a mix of an office and at home. She's fluent in Spanish and also speaks French reasonably well.

Carmen obviously has a lot more experience than the role we advertised requires (as did a lot of the candidates). So we've rethought the role and once she ramps up, the plan will be for Carmen to essentially replace me in managing all of our operations. I'll then focus more of my time on business development.

Carmen started with us this week and we're extremely excited to have her join us. Welcome to the team Carmen!